Introducing Lester.

Let me just say this: I LOVE SAN FRANCISCO. It is home, and it is like no other city. That being said, I can’t afford to live here anymore (Do you have any idea how pathetic the salary is for a pastry chef?). So some day, I will leave. There’s a long list of things that I want to get done before saying my goodbye. I’d like to ride my bike along the California coastline, climb Mt Shasta, spend a summer working on one of California’s amazing organic family farms, eat at Gary Danko, drive through one of those big redwood tree tunnels (do those even exist?). Near the top of that list is to exploit something that the bay area has that no other place can (literally) touch: wild yeast.

For all my friends unfamiliar with sourdough, here’s a quickie – sourdough is made from wild yeast that is “caught” from the air around us and is grown in a container. This is called a BARM. You feed it every day with a little water and flour, a total amount of half your BARM’s weight. I made a sourdough starter last year, nursed it for weeks, and then killed it. Somewhere in that exercise I missed the part about letting it out at room temperature before and after feeding it, to wake the little critters up for dinnertime.

I am now starting anew. I would like to introduce you to Lester, son of Fester, the BARM from my work.

Lester lives in my fridge and will provide me with sourdough bread for as long as I take care of him. How awesome is that?